While most of us thought we knew Winnie the Pooh's favorite food, it turns out there's quite an argument about what honey is. And isn't.

The U.S. Food and Drug administration recently issued a draft guideline in the Federal Register for labeling honey that attempts to set the record straight. The guideline mentions bees and nectar and says the end product is the only thing that can be in a bottle labeled "honey."

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., who had lobbied for a federal honey standard, describes the move in a news release as "sweet news for Upstate New York's honey producers and consumers. 'Honey laundering' by exporters from China and other countries, as well as the use of additives in their products, is a threat to those businesses producing authentic honey, and to those consuming it."

Without a standard, consumers don't know if the product they pick off the shelf comes straight out of the hive after minimal filtering or is more processed or even watered down. In addition, a standard could help confirm the floral sources the bees use to make the honey — orange blossoms, buckwheat or clover, for example.

But a single standard defining — and some would say limiting — honey is a sticky issue among bee keepers. The federal guideline isn't enough for some purist beekeepers. And any regulation at all seems to be too much for others, who say common sense is all that's needed.

In any case, folks have until Monday to submit written comments on the draft before the agency begins work on final guidelines for honey producers.

The buzz started several years ago over imported honey, often selling for much cheaper than New York beekeepers charge, and sometimes including antibiotics and non-honey sweeteners without labeling its origin or non-honey contents.

"I've seen the stuff where it's 100 percent corn syrup in the jar," said Jim Doan, a beekeeper in Hamlin who takes hundreds of hives from New York to Florida and back each year. Though he worries about foreign adulteration of honey and competition, he's opposed to standards any stricter than the dictionary definition included in the FDA proposal.

Hobbyist beekeeper Robert Muir, who recently got back into bees with some hives in Greece, is in favor of the FDA standard.

"Definitely I want the Chinese out of here," Muir said, noting recent problems with pets dying after ingesting tainted dog treats from China.

"The whole issue is about Chinese honey," agreed Pat Bono, who keeps hives in Wayne County. Bono, who coordinates a statewide program teaching beekeepers how to keep their colonies healthy, led an unsuccessful charge to create a state "standard of identity," a highly technical definition. Such standards have been created for other foods, such as olive oil, but many foods don't have them.

Some proponents of a honey standard are worried that without a strict standard, the word "honey" will become a generic phrase meaning any liquid that is sticky, sweet and amber-colored, the same way "butter" is often used to describe many types of spread that have nothing to do with a cow.

Bono said the FDA guidelines are weak.

"It's kind of like, I want to say, on a scale of 1 to 100, this is like a 2 for effectiveness," she said.

Bono and others hoped to create a standard that would prevent adulteration and also allow regulators to confirm whether the honey contains evidence — pollen, basically — of the nectar source the bees used.

"Without pollen, you don't know where the honey is from. Without pollen you will just not know. If it's labeled clover honey or orange (blossom) honey, you just won't know if it's true or not," Bono said.

She also favors a strict ceiling on how much moisture is in honey and more detailed definition about how honey can be treated once it is collected from the bees.

"Raw honey is honey that has not been heated to more then 210 degrees," Bono said. "Many of the larger producers (and) packers will heat the honey to higher temperatures so it's easier to pump and bottle. Some may even subject honey to a higher temperature to melt or destroy any crystals in the honey," she said.

A number of local producers say honey is heated and filtered so much that natural proteins and pollen are removed.

"Honey is actually a living fluid with enzymes and amino acids. If you heat it too much, it changes texture," said Pam Davis of Cayuga County, who sells honey at the Rochester Public Market each week. Nevertheless, Davis said, she is against a strict standard because it requires more regulation.

"I hate to see them coming down on us more and more," she said.

Michael Kopicki, owner of Kopicki Apiary in Webster, is a purist who sells raw honey but is also against a strict guideline.

"I don't want to have to pay money to have a guy check my stuff out, because I know it's good," he said. And Kopicki is convinced that people who adulterate honey will find a way to get around any standard.

Doan said the stricter standard Bono proposed for New York assumed all honey is bottled and sold retail. But he used to sell about 20 percent of his honey for ingredients. Makers of beer, bread and yogurt all have their parameters for honey, he said, that are quite different than for the kind of honey you want to spread on your biscuits.

Unless honey is ultra-filtered, for example, it will cloud the honey beer it's added to, Doan said. To meet the moisture content standards of bread-makers, he would blend honey. "You're going to take high and low honey, so you get that moisture that's exactly what they want," he said. He fears a limit on moisture content could result in prohibiting producers from blending different batches of honey.

Even a pollen requirement is too restrictive, according to Doan.

"No honey is 100 percent of anything," he said. Bees seek different nectar and pollen sources and no one can control their movements. "The bees are going to get a cornucopia of different things. They don't want just mashed potatoes, they want steak and corn and dessert and other things along with their mashed potatoes," Doan said.

An adulterer could get around a pollen standard by simply adding a particular plant's pollen before the honey is packaged, Doan added.

Some beekeepers and experts are staying out of the honey-standard fray.

"I haven't developed a personal position yet," said Christina Wahl, a Cornell veterinary researcher who has been a beekeeper for years.

The Ontario-Finger Lakes Beekeeper Association has avoided taking a position, too, said President Patrick Patrick Freivald, who raises bees in Livingston and Ontario counties.

"It's a contentious issue," Freivald said. "One kind of honey standard will significantly help one kind of beekeeper, but hurt others."

The problem may lie in trying to come up with just one standard, he said. And the solution may lie in creating grades of honey, similar to what happens in the maple syrup, milk and meat industries.